


Before I Wake

by thatsrightdollface



Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, Gen, Healing, Hope, Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-17
Updated: 2019-03-17
Packaged: 2019-11-23 01:57:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,703
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18145286
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thatsrightdollface/pseuds/thatsrightdollface
Summary: Pogo gives Allison a call before Luther wakes up after his accident.





	Before I Wake

**Author's Note:**

> Notes: Hi there!!! I hope you enjoy this fic, if you read it. I’m sorry, as ever, for anything I got wrong. :)  
> A couple things:  
> \- I think Allison is pregnant here, but she doesn’t know it yet. Let’s say even in this AU she doesn’t end up separated from her kid, though. So.   
> \- Maybe the jack-in-the-box monkey was just a symbolic representation of Luther’s emotional state. Or maybe someone actually decided leaving a wind-up monkey there was a good idea……?  
> \- This is very sappy and self-serving. You have been warned...!!!! 
> 
> Thank you so much! Have a great day.

Allison Hargreeves had been working when the call came — she’d been on set and dressed up like a magical knight in mother of pearl-ish body armor.  She didn’t get the message until later, when she’d unstrapped her fake oil spill dragonfly wings and rumored one of the movie’s techs into thinking her jokes were funny.

The message was from Allison’s old home number — her father’s number — and she almost hung up when she didn’t hear Luther’s mumbling, earnest hello.  Luther was still living at home, after all.  Still obeying orders, nodding very seriously when he felt he had to, zipping on a familiar uniform and never going into town just for fun.  Answering to “Number One,” or “Spaceboy,” all the time and almost never to his own living name.

Allison hadn’t heard from Luther in a while, actually — he had called to check in on her frequently enough back when she’d first moved to California.  Maybe it was the announcement of her engagement that had done it.  Maybe Luther was wondering why she hadn’t told him herself.  Sometimes _Allison_ wondered why she hadn’t told Luther about all that herself, to be completely honest...  Why she hadn’t called him in a long time, either, or offered to fly him out to meet all her shiny new friends.

Allison thought about calling Luther _so much of the time_ , though.  Quietly, telling herself she wasn’t thinking about it at all.  She thought about Luther muffling his laughter into his arm, or reading books while doing push-ups, or murmuring snarky commentary against the back of her neck at fancy Hollywood parties.  Luther had never done that last thing, of course.  Obviously.

The message was from her father’s assistant Pogo, though, and he was saying there’d been an accident.  They weren’t sure whether Dad’s cure was sticking yet.  Maybe Allison would like to say goodbye, if it came to that; maybe she’d like to be there if “Master Luther” woke up.

If.

If, if, if.

Allison’s hands were sticky and shaking, suddenly, and she hated the way Pogo’s voice had stumbled just a little mentioning her father’s “cure.”  She met her own eyes in the mirror across the trailer, past the other pieces of her costume, past little relics of her whole new glittery world.  Her reflection looked like a total stranger.

The flight back home, back to the manor, seemed to stretch for days.

...

The first thing Allison did at Luther’s bedside was tuck away the wind-up jack-in-the-box monkey someone had left there.  She muttered, “What the hell?” down at the little guy, and replaced it with the book that had been lying cracked open on Luther’s bedside table.  He’d been reading this recently, she imagined; it looked like he was about halfway through.  It was the kind of adventure story with themes of definitive right and wrong woven throughout and a lot of space battles. The kind of adventure where the heroes were sure to get a happy ending.

Allison read some of that book aloud, her clothes rumpled from the airplane and her makeup still splattered a little with dragonfly knight glitter from the day before.  She read in a gentle, singsong murmur, because Luther was still breathing choppily, an IV tracing its way out of his arm.

It was difficult to look at the messy, ragged places in his chest, where Luther’d been torn open.  Where the syringe with that cure had gone in.  The air still smelled like blood and sizzling chemicals all around him.

Allison had heard Luther’s heart had stopped.  It had stopped, and then just barely started trembling again.  Shaking itself messily awake.

_That_ was almost impossible to think about, too.  Luther’s heart, stopped. He would be so still, expressive eyes gone blank as the moon, and he’d never reach the happy ending in his book.  Never reach the happy ending Allison had always imagined for him in his own life, either. Luther had spent so long trying to save everyone, throwing himself at danger.  And now, throwing himself at danger completely, terribly alone.

When Allison’s new fiancé, Patrick, called, she told him a little of what had happened in a dull, soft voice.  He asked if she wanted him to fly out and help her, be there for her, and she was surprised by how adamantly she told him no.  He was feeling things because he _had_ to, after all.  Allison didn’t like admitting it to herself, but... Patrick was calling because it was inevitable he would call, like the sun setting or coming to the end of a page you started to read.

Maybe she didn’t want that, really.  Maybe she’d never wanted that.

Allison perched on the edge of her chair and read about heroism, about justice and true love and destiny, and as she read Luther’s strange medicine sank in deep.  As she read the changes came, and she reached over and dragged Luther’s swelling, shifting hand into her own.  Squeezed his fingers.

“I’m here,” Allison said.  Luther shifted in his sleep — in his half-life, in his journey crawling back up from the underworld — and she felt her breath catch in her throat.

She asked Pogo whether this — the change — hurt him, and Pogo shook his head.  Said there was no way to know, yet, but they had pumped Luther full of pain medication just in case.

Untested procedures.  They had all, all of them, been untested procedures ever since Reginald Hargreeves took them in.

Allison watched the wounds stitch themselves closed all over Luther’s skin, and become replaced by something else.

...

“I heard a rumor you woke up soon, and lived a long time, and…  And came with me to my next  
premier?  If you decide you want to.”

Luther heard Allison’s voice through a haze, through streets of winding fog, through so much heavy blood-soaked cotton shoved between his ears.  His skin felt like it was stretched and sinking into the earth, both at once.  He couldn’t get his eyes open just yet, but he listened to Allison – it _was_ Allison, right? – murmuring, “You can say no, of course.  Shit.  Actually, I heard a rumor you can say anything you need to.”

He wished he could ask what exactly she was talking about.

Allison’s voice called Luther by name, softly, softly, and when he gasped awake later the sunlight was back, spilling into the room all gold and almost liquid.  His head felt clearer, and he was sure he’d dreamed Allison there.  Until he started reaching for the IV in his arm…  Started searching around for the crackling sour chemical wounds in his chest.  You know.  Allison shifted Luther’s chin, leaning him over to look at her, then.  She spoke to him slowly, carefully.  Did he remember what happened?  How was he feeling?

Stringing words together felt like piecing out a complex equation.  Luther tried to smile as reassuringly as he knew how.  Since when was Allison this concerned about him, nowadays?  She was beautiful, her eyebrows crinkled together a little bit, her hair catching in the light.

Allison kissed the space between Luther’s eyes very, very carefully and told him to breathe slow.  Told him she wasn’t sure what she could’ve done next, if he didn’t wake up.  Told him she should’ve been there, should’ve had his back, and Reginald never – _never_ – should have sent him out somewhere like that alone.

“It’s okay.  I’m okay?” Luther told her, and he hoped that was true.  It felt like Allison was holding his hand, now, but also like his hand was too huge, too stiff to be his own.

Luther saw his skin, next.  Of course he had to, he had to eventually understand.  He felt the scream uncurling inside himself, panic and incomprehension choking in his throat.  It had to matter that Allison was rubbing his too-huge shoulder, though.  That even if he tried to pull away, tried to tell her not to look, she had known before he did and hadn’t gone anywhere.  Didn’t see this as the end of him, the end of anything real.

With a compact mirror from her purse, Allison showed Luther that he could still recognize his own face.  Same eyes, same nose, same cheeks even despite his new, grown-too-quickly facial hair.  It was surreal seeing the place where his skin turned from a stranger’s to human – and it was surreal in a different, better way to see the edge of Allison’s face reflected right next to his cheek.  Her makeup was faded in a way the paparazzi never would’ve gotten to see, and she was watching his expressions.  Trying her best to hold his reflection’s eyes.

Same face, same expressions, same self.  Allison changed out Luther’s IV bag and asked him about what hurt – what _should hurt less_ , really – and whether he felt up to drinking a little from a water bottle she’d brought all splattered with painted stars.

The rest of the Umbrella Academy came through, every now and then.  One at a time and talking nervously from behind the door, at first.  Allison had called them, murmuring something about being a team again, even just a little, even just now.  Vanya had brought by a CD of soft music, it turned out, and Klaus brought the kind of flowers it was suggested someone might find out back behind a grocery store after closing time.  They only looked a little, little dead.  Luther had been a little dead, too, and now he was…  Well, he’d heard so much more about Allison’s life in Hollywood.  He hung on her words, watching her get swallowed up from story to story and talk with her hands.  They’d finished reading that book he was working on, too.  Luther thought Allison might have actually really loved it — she’d seemed genuinely moved when they got to the end.

By the time Reginald Hargreeves suggested that maybe it was time to give Luther a new mission, Allison said that was a no-go.  He was already coming to a movie premier with her soon, after all.  Very soon – or not.  And if not, then…  If he decided not to go near any of those cameras, yet…  They’d just have to figure out something better.


End file.
